Nuclear Winter
by FalseEyelashes
Summary: A nuclear family is defined as a household consisting of a mother, a father and their children. One rotten apple ruins the bunch, and this family tree is just waiting to meet the ax. JackClaire, slight SawyerKate, ClaireCharlie. Season Two, mild AU


**Nuclear Winter**

**Disclaimer: **_Lost _belongs to JJ Abrams and the Gang (not to be mistaken with Kool and the Gang) and the song lyrics used in the beginning of this story are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Iam well aware that I am not a member of said bandand I'm really not trying to pretend they are mine, and the lyrics at the end of this story belong to The Stars.

**Rating: **PG-13

**Summary: **A nuclear family is defined as a household consisting of a mother, a father and their children. One rotten apple ruins the bunch, and this family tree is just waiting to meet the ax. Jack/Claire, slight Sawyer/Kate, Claire/Charlie. AU version of Season Two.

**Author's Note: **Um, all together now: where the hell did this come from? My reply? I have no clue. I was watching some old _Lost_ episodes, as in last season, and the recent ones, even with the whole maybe-Claire-is-Jack's-half-sister-because-Christian-kind-of-sort-of-has-an-Australian-daughter-who-may-or-may-not-be-Claire thing, and this sort of _happened_. Can't explain. I've always liked Claire and I've always liked Jack, but (put the guns down, kids) I've never really liked Claire with Charlie and I've never really liked Jack with Kate. For some reason, I liked the utter improbability and unlikelihood of Claire and Jack ever being portrayed as a romantic couple. This story, I make no apologies for it. To say it is pseudo-incestuous would be probably be the closest way to describe it. To say that it wasn't pretty would be an understatement. I started this story before the Season Two finale, but I managed to incorporate it into the ending. This story runs parallel to Season Two, but still, because of the pairing it's pretty much AU. I hope you read and I hope you enjoy. Thanks!

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**-**

**- - -**

Time, time is gone  
It stops, stops who it wants  
Well I was wrong  
It never lasts  
And there is no,  
And this is no  
**Modern romance**…

- _"Modern Romance" Yeah Yeah Yeahs_

**- - -**

**-**

**- - -**

Jack hated elementary school. He hated the stupid mindless activities, all the messy finger-painting and the never-ending games of tag at recess. He never really saw a point.

It was just an exercise in marking time.

He never really saw a point to the myriad of family portraits they were instructed to draw. You know who your family is. You know who your parents are. What's the point in illustrating them repeatedly? He knew that they existed. He didn't need the constant crayon-drawn reminder.

It's funny though. Time passed down and he got older and then he wasn't drawing with scented markers on construction paper but carving with metal through tissue and skin. And he kind of needed a reminder. He kind of needed to see how it was possible for that family to stand in a row before a perfect house built on a foundation of pretend.

On an island eating mangoes, Jack can't remember the last time he sat down with his parents, said a word of grace, and dug into a family meal.

He thinks he might have been eight.

- -

He doesn't know how old she is.

He doesn't know how old she is and he doesn't know what her parents did or if they are even still alive, if she prefers dogs to cats or cats to dogs, if she ever planned on having children or if the opposite is true, making Aaron twice the disaster for her. He never asked. He never saw a point. Or, rather, he saw a point in not asking.

Asking leads to answers. And answers make it real. Answers turn it all into a painful reality where acceptance is a solution you'd rather ignore, where it all becomes about the fact that he's a maybe unstable divorcee and she's a young, single mother and the impracticality of it all floats to the surface, sullying whatever once was there. He wonders if she has health insurance. He won't ask about that one either.

There's just something vaguely primitive about him, Claire and a baby that almost adds up to something right.

He thinks he likes it. But he knows he's not looking at the bigger picture.

- -

The beach is dark, strangely quiet. Rolling surf and heavy breeze providing the melody for the jungle's night percussion.

Aaron asleep in his crib, asleep in a nursery without walls, with twinkling stars as a makeshift mobile.

And there's Claire standing before him, dark night, dark beach. Blonde hair caught in the crest of a breeze.

He came here just to check. For awhile there she was hunting him down every morning, every inconvenient spare moment, to ask him what was wrong with her son, because really, in this situation, there had to be something.

He hasn't seen her in awhile. There's been the hatch and the button and a man who may or may not be named Henry. It's been kind of busy.

Their conversation was brief, short and hushed. And now he's just standing there, hands in his pocket, looking for something to say because this is nothing short of awkward and he's not sure why exactly.

Suddenly, his jaw is trapped between tiny hands, pale hands, fingers digging into the side of his face, stubble on soft skin, and she's on tip-toe, bringing his face down to hers, and there, a brief, chaste, scared kiss on his lips, lasting a second longer than it should have. He just stands there, stock-still, shocked, hands hanging limply at his sides.

Just as quickly, she backs away, one step.

"Oh, God, Jack. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry and so incredibly…stupid. I didn't mean to…it's just…I wasn't thinking and it's dark and we're alone…and maybe that's why…I'm just…"

Somewhere mid-stumbling apology Jack quit listening and instead just watched the dark shadow of her lips, moving, rapid-fire, words tumbling, spilling, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because that one kiss was nowhere near enough.

He grips her by the shoulder and kisses her. Hard. Shetrips backwards, her mouth parting slightly, and he pulls her closer, moving forward, keeping her from hitting the sand.

The moon makes both their skin look dead, old and tired, and as he pulls away he almost feels as though he should be judged.

- -

If it weren't for the Others, for the hatch, for the whole saving-the-world aspect of this island, he would almost call it something akin to summer camp.

They are all juvenile and silly, petty and prone to creating arguments revolving around nothing and everything at once. A brood of arguing siblings, a pack of angry adolescents. He wonders if people ever really do grow up, and if so, when exactly that great change comes about.

He has yet to see it.

He's still spending a summer at camp, and Claire, being with Claire is like sneaking onto the girls side of camp, that fleeting feeling of romance, knowing that come the close, you'll promise to write but you really mean that you'll send one letter, short, brief, sloppy handwriting and that will be the last she'll ever hear from you.

It's a lot more clandestine than it really needs to be. And he kind of knows the exact reason why. Kate. And Charlie.

They're both kind of caught between two people who kind of want to love them but don't quite know the way to go about it, or even if they themselves wish to return the sentiment.

He's pretty sure he doesn't love Kate.

Kate. Kate, he wants to make her over, kind of like one of those Bob Villa do-it-yourself projects that always end in a disaster of sawdust and mismeasurements, but the frustration blends just right with the feeling of completion, and it's all kind of worth it. He wants to remake her, almost in a Rex Harrison _My Fair Lady_ sense, but when it comes down to it, he thinks he likes her best a little dirty, dirty and focused and on the trail of something or other, and it really wouldn't effect him if she had a cockney accent.

When it comes down to it though, Jack doesn't see Kate as a woman. He sees her as an end table that needs some sprucing up, as a little tomboy Daddy locked outside the house because she was late for dinner, and twenty-odd years later, the latch still hasn't been turned.

It doesn't matter. Sawyer got locked out too and the two of them seem more than able to keep themselves occupied until one of them finds salvation or maybe just a key.

Jack never really had a house to miss. And whereas Kate is just an idea, Claire has some actual form and function.

- -

He's just waiting for people to start asking him. He's waiting for them to ask him where he's been, what he's been doing. But the questions never come.

He stays with her at night. Lies there next to her, the darkness of the night hiding their figures from prying eyes, and really, at this point, no one really cares. No one notices.

Late at night, they'll talk. They talk but they always seem to skim over the details that matter and that make them who they are.

They talk about Aaron a lot, the always safe topic of conversation.

Claire worries that it's wrong to raise a son here, on the island. That it's wrong to raise a boy so far from civilization and so deep in the wild.

He thinks about elementary school and being on that playground and the fist flying into his face, turning his eye not black but into a bruised kaleidoscope of blue and purple and green and yellow. He thinks about his father and wonders how differently things may or may not have turned out between the two men had bedtime stories and fishing trips had ever existed back when that kind of shit was all and everything he needed.

"All kids grow up in the wild, Claire. Aaron is really no different."

- -

The first time he fucked Claire was the first time since crashing into the verdant den of the jungle that he quit hoping to be rescued. Sometime between his hand sliding the course of her pale back and the final thrust, he realized he couldn't think of a single thing back home, in LA, better than this.

It was odd. To say the least.

It reminded him of being sixteen and in his first girlfriend's bedroom, her twin bed with the pink floral comforter and the run-of-the-mill Tiger Beat clippings decorating her wall, three years outdated. Her drugstore perfume, cheap and tangy, and his shaky, clumsy hands. And it was stupid and awkward and the most hopeful experience of his inexperienced little life.

Claire was quite the opposite. There was still that fear in the air and on their skin, that same question flooding both their eyes, movements fluid, not quite graceful, lacking the precision and choreography time and familiarity create.

The sand was rough on his bare forearms, grating against his legs as they moved against each other. He had gripped her tight, probably too tight, in retrospect, her hipbone sharp against his palm. She was quiet, near silent, panting in his ear, coming on a long exhale and a cat spine arching of her back.

And for a second there it all made sense. He made sense and so did she and yes, maybe they are meant for each other, maybe there is a such thing as fate and destiny and maybe, sometimes, you travel the right road and the right plane falls out of the sky and the right people stumble upon each other, sad scared souls stuck in sand. Sometimes it can work and sometimes we can get it right, and Jack, he took a deep breath and let it out slow.

He doesn't know how old she is. And he'll probably never get her phone number. But it's alright. The stars spell out that it's okay, and for now, he's willing to believe it.

- -

You never see it coming. Half the time, you don't even see it happening. Suddenly there's a mushroom cloud ballooning in the distance, the ground is trembling and all you can taste is death and panic somersaults your stomach into a knot time and guile have nothing to say for.

The end of the world is a lot sneakier than any physicist cares to admit.

Locke found another hatch. He and Eko found another hatch and brought back handfuls of aged paperwork and old, tired notebooks. Most were blank. Idly, attempting to keep his mind from the dead bodies of Ana and Libby, to stop questioning Michael, to just not think at all, he rifles through them.

He freezes when he sees his father's name.

He sees his father's name. He sees his own. He sees what must be a family tree. And he sees Claire, hanging off a branch all alone. Hanging off a branch stemming from his father.

The paper feels old in his hands, rough, as though if he rubs it between his fingers a time or two it will simply disintegrate, and maybe then the truth will just be tiny illegible scraps of paper lying at his feet. Lying there, lying, lying, lying and no longer words that spell the truth.

It doesn't happen. It's too easy. And the world is ending. The world is ending and you just can't tell it to stop. Jack though, Jack, he reminds himself that once upon a time on a different rock named California and civilization he used to play God and stitch people back together with a new lease on life. He imagines if he could remember how to assume that role again, this would be the ultimate lesson in humility.

The world is ending and the tide is flooding and Noah really doesn't have time to build an ark.

And, Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. He has been fucking his younger sister. He has been fucking his younger sister. His sister. His little sister. Claire is his sister.

That son of a bitch.

His mind flashes back twenty-odd years, that chasm between childhood and teenage angst, and his father – Christian – was MIA once again. He remembers trying to ignore his mother, crying as she made dinner alone in the kitchen. Not catching Jack's eye all night and instead downing half a bottle of merlot over dinner and the other half while watching a prepackaged sitcom with tin-can laughter ringing through the empty house.

The phone rang and Jack had answered it.

"Hiya, Jack-o! Did I…did I wake you up?" At the time he had thought he had sounded funny, but now, with the clear lens of retrospect he can see that Christian was hammered out of his mind.

"No. Where are you, Dad?"

"Sydney. I'm in Sydney, Jack." And a baby cried in the background, and he could hear a woman yelling, yelling his father's name.

"Where are you, Dad?"

"I'm nowhere, Jack. Tell you're mother I'll be home this weekend. Good night, son."

He turns his head and retches onto the tile floor beneath him.

- -

"Claire, I need to show you something."

He knows that she can recognize the bedside manner tone of his voice. The fact that this is business, not pleasure, and he really could be talking to any number of people on that drop of land for all it mattered. He tried to ignore the blatant look of hurt crossing her face, and he wonders if she looked this way at five or fifteen, angry she didn't get her own way, angry and hurt and confused that her father is never there. He feels sick again.

He hands her the paper and watches her study it, her face sliding from disinterest to mild curiosity to full-blown confusion.

"I don't…I don't understand, Jack. What…is this a family tree?" He nods, and her head dips down again, studying the names and that simple bold line that connects her to him and her to his father and he to the exact same man.

"No…no, Jack. This isn't…this can't be right. I mean…this…this says…it says that…"

"We're brother and sister," he whispers.

The long sheet of paper curls and slowly floats to the ground below, landing with scarcely a sound.

- -

It ends just as abruptly as it began.

At the funeral, he says his words, not sure how to summarize Ana-Lucia, but he tries anyway. And when it's over, and Hurley tries to summarize Libby and grief, he catches sight of Claire clasping Charlie's hand, baby in her arms, a little blond family glowing in the late afternoon sunlight.

It doesn't matter. Tomorrow morning he's walking straight into something akin to the jaws of death.

He'd try to summarize this, Claire and him, but that's never going to happen.

- -

The hours don't matter and soon, too soon, too late, it will be morning. Jack lays there, still, tired alone, and as the stars dip and slide across the sky he prays he opens his eyes upon a shore breathing of rescue and release.

- -

He knew it wouldn't end well. He knew the second Michael confessed in the middle of the jungle that this little episode wouldn't be met with a happy ending.

He didn't think it'd turn out this bad.

He's alone, in a cell. He is alone and he is wondering what the reason was behind any of this. If there was a point, if there ever is a point, to the emotional turmoil we unintentionally put ourselves through.

He guesses that's just what they call life. What they call love.

Looking up, sleep derived, hungry, he can see out the tiny window of his cell. He can see his father standing there, dressed for work, and he wonders if he were a man of faith, just believing would be enough to make him real.

The light bulb sways above his head.

Were they all ever meant to be together? To be a family? A mom, a dad, a brother and a sister? Were they supposed to end up like this? Alone on an island, alone in the middle of nowhere, far and away from after-school snacks and family road trips.

_I don't believe in destiny_.

He can close his eyes, close his eyes against the dizziness and see her, see Claire, and for a minute there, it's like knowing a sense of peace. It's like knowing that somehow, that yes, the puzzle may be ugly and the picture may not be what we want to see, but the pieces do fit, the pieces do fit, and in the end, in the end it all can make sense.

_I don't believe in destiny._

_Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet._

The room slants crooked, the ground sliding up to where the walls should sit. Jack's throat aches, dry, scratchy. Dehydration thrumming through his body, a sick off-beat accompanying the hammered pounding of his heart, deafening in his ears.

His eyes rest bleary and unfocused on the small window before him, four bars marring the view ahead. His eyes flicker, the light dancing before him, perception off, his breathing quick.

One blink, and nothing. Another, and just the bars rest before him. A third, and dim emptiness stretch before him. A fourth, and the panic begins to dull into something else as he recognizes his breathing is slowing, his pulse faltering and that his fingers feel strangely numb. A fifth, and through the quick flutter of eyelashes, his father stands there, clad in a white labcoat and dark pants, before him.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry."

And Jack smiles, mouth strangely lax and the corners inflexible. He'd tell him that it's okay, he'd tell him, but he probably already knows.

Blackness envelops him. And it's okay. He's never really had a home anyway.

- -

He opens eyes to blurred shapes, people he can't recognize; it all just a swirled mess of a watercolor before him as though someone got the paint-by-number directions and remembered they were illiterate halfway through. He can hear, but it's all fuzzy. Voices too loud, too low, too amplified for him to understand.

- -

And it's Claire. Her pale hand on his shoulder.

"We're going to be fine, Jack. We're going to be alright."

And he just smiles. And wonders why she is wearing his father's labcoat.

**- - -**

**-**

**- - -**

You're still hooked on cellophane, killing time with gin and lime. Each second numbs the pain; love's just another rhyme.

It's going to be that way (going, going, gone).

I'm scared **but I'm okay** (going, going, gone).

There's nowhere to move on.

All I see again

All I see

All I see again

Is me, everywhere. It's me.

- "_Going, Going, Gone" The Stars _

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-

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**fin. **


End file.
